Originally posted at WattHead – Energy News and Commentary
An update on the story that just keeps on giving: the unfolding saga of the forged letters fraudulently sent by DC lobby firm Bonner and Associates on behalf of dirty coal interests in a deceitful attempt to kill Congressional clean energy and climate legislation.
In June, employees at Bonner and Associates, on a contract for the dirty coal front group, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (subcontracted via the Hawthorne Group), sent letters to several Congressional offices fraudulently posing as black, Hispanic, women’s and senior citizen’s groups urging votes against the American Clean Energy and Security Act (the Waxman-Markey bill).
Now, Brad Johnson at the WonkRoom reports:
The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) is dumping Bonner & Associates, the Astroturf firm that forged letters to Congress attacking clean energy legislation on its behalf. … ACCCE spokesman Joe Lucas told National Journal that his organization “did nothing wrong”:
“We will not be working with Mr. Bonner again. ACCCE did nothing wrong. Looking back, there would be many things we would do differently.“
In fact, ACCCE covered up the fraud and is now throwing Bonner under the bus. The coal coalition had been informed by the Hawthorn Group, its primary contractor, days before the pivotal House vote on the energy legislation. But ACCCE kept silent, failing to notify lawmakers or the defrauded organizations. ACCCE continues to employ the Hawthorn Group and the notorious voter-fraud company Lincoln Strategy Group.
Makes you wonder, what else is the dirty energy lobby up to…
Ouch, sucks to be Jack Bonner and Associates. I wonder if he feels the pain when his big corporate buddies drop him in public? Or maybe he knows that he can just reform his company under a different name and keep doing this, as these companies tend to do.
One small victory for the concerned public, one step on the long road to having a politics free of fraud, lies, deceit and those who say 100% profit, 0% climate action.
Thanks for updating us on this.
ACCCE is absolutely shameless:
“I can take you to places in eastern Kentucky where community services were hampered because of a lack of flat space — to build factories, to build hospitals, even to build schools,” said Joe Lucas of Americans for Clean Coal Electricity. “In many places, mountain-top mining, if done responsibly, allows for land to be developed for community space.”